


Switched

by Lavanya_Six



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Complete, Crack, Existentialism, Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-23
Updated: 2011-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 05:51:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavanya_Six/pseuds/Lavanya_Six
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Ty Lee was the emo girl and Mai was the cheerful one? [WARNING: Contains dimestore existentialism.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This drabble was inspired by a fanart by irish-blessing called [Mai and Ty Lee - Switched](http://irish-blessing.deviantart.com/art/Mai-and-Ty-Lee-Switched-36128743).

"Ty Lee, could that possibly be you?"

The grey-clad acrobat broke out of her routine and kowtowed to her Crown Princess, then rose. Her long braid was fixed at the top with a tiny skull-faced headpiece. Remnant of various different hair dyes - blacks, reds, dark blues and purples - were layered in her braid like geological strata. "Azula," she said, voice monotone. "Your life hasn't ended yet."

Azula smiled, gratified to see that her friend was just as she'd always been, if not moreso. "Please, don't let me interrupt your... whatever it is you were doing."

Ty Lee nodded and returned to contorting her body into shapes that, while not violating the natural order, seemed at odds with the capabilities of humans. The odd bent of her spine and excessive twist to her neck unnerved Azula, which was just what Ty Lee wished.

This was not the first time Azula had been around a warped, mutilated body, however, and she quickly recovered. "Tell me, what is the daughter of a nobleman doing here? Certainly our parents didn't send us to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls to end up in... places like this."

Ty Lee sighed, yet she did not know why. If man could be said to have anything approaching a 'destiny', it was to never be understood by others. "We are, all of us, born into this world screaming. We're trained not to cry at the world's senseless chaos, and we fool ourselves that we can be the masters of anything, but entropy denies any order we imagine or try to impose on the world. Fire consume everything until it burns out. Water bent to ice will melt, in time. Weather erodes the walls of Ba Sing Se, even as the men that defend their heights from other men maintain the illusion of their perminance by replacing that which time has worn away. Perhaps the airbenders grasped the transient nature of their element, or perhaps not. Either way I will go out tonight to perform on that high-wire, demonstrating that fearing the prospect of death is as absurd as blithely appreciating the numbing safety of everyday life."

Azula stared back her friend.

"Let me explain my thesis more succinctly," Ty Lee said. "Have you ever realized that you're perfectly free to carve off your own fingers and eat them, one by one, until you pass out from pain or blood loss?"

Blood drained from the princess's face. "I... I hadn't realized that."

"You should." Ty Lee reached up with her left foot and squeezed Azula's shoulder. "You really should."

 

***

 

The governor's wife and his daughter, Mai, walked through Omashu. Even in the nighttime, Mai inspired watery eyes in those that had the misfortunate to look upon her. Torchlight exposed garish colors - vomit green, pink, sky blue, and orange. Lots of orange.

It seemed to be the case that Mai had looked at her closet one day and said "Why the hell not?" before picking clothes out at random to throw on. Yet the matching multi-colored odango ornaments in her hair served as a horrifying counter-argument that Mai had indeed designed her outfit with deliberate care.

"I'm so boooooored."

Behind the two noblewomen, their escort guards shivered. A bored Mai was never a good Mai.

"Dear," said the older woman, "your father was appointed governor. We're like royalty here. Be happy and enjoy it."

Mai rolled her head around her shoulders, as if limbering up for a fight. "At least back home Azula let me watch her burn people. Are you sure we can't throw a public execution or two?"

"No."

"Pretty please? I won't even ask to hold the executioner's axe this time!"

"I said 'no', Mai."

The teen folded her hands together, rainbow glitter painted fingernails sparkling as the women passed under a brightly lit stone archway. "Pwwwwease?"

" _Young lady_ , I already said-"

It was then that several tons of masonry came tumbling towards the pair, only to explode into a harmless cloud of dust. As far as assassination attempts went, it was pitiful, but the Fire Nation people appreciated the thought that went into the effort.

The governor's wife pointed to a nearby boy dressed in saffron and cried, "The resistance!"

Mai fist-pumped the air. "DATTEBAYOOO!" She, the bastard love-child of a rainbow, then whipped out several dozen knives in each hand and sprinted off after the boy assassin.

"Wait!" her mother cried out. "Take them alive and-"

But Mai was already gone, the only evidence of her in the nighttime a rapidly fading, excited chant of, "Knife knife knife knife KNIFE knife knife knife knife knife knifeknifeknifeKNIFEknife!"

"-oh, forget it."

 

***

 

Backstage, Ty Lee busied herself with washing off the congealed ostrich-horse blood she doused herself with before every performance. "You're impromptu additions to my show were inspired, Azula. Having the audience watch those majestic animals tear each other to pieces really highlighted the true bestial nature of what we commonly whitewash as 'humanity'. The parallel between their suffering and my walking the high-wire really highlight my ultimate message as an artist."

"Thank you?"

"I'm not sure about keeping the flaming net as part of my routine, however. It presents a subtext of fixed moral judgement and punishment should any of us 'fall off our high-wire', as it were. I want my audience not to be afraid of the ultimate end that inevitably awaits us all."

"Um... right." Azula rubbed the back of her neck. "Look, I was trying to be subtle about this, but I'm not really giving you an option about joining me on this mission."

The acrobat paused. "I see."

"And seeing you out there tonight just reinforced my belief that I need you, Ty Lee. I need 'The Girl Without Fear' on my side."

"Without Fear?" Ty Lee bowed her head, lips quirked in sardonic amusement. "You're mistaken. I'm afraid all the time, Azula. Who wouldn't be? We live in a world where preteen vegetarian pacifists were genocided due to our nation's foreign policy ambitions, where those people's last survivor possesses the power to annihilate the human race should he choose." She smiled wanly. "How absurd our existence is, no?"

Azula rubbed her forehead, wishing the burgeoning headache away. "Sure. Whatever."

"I will join you," Ty Lee said. "However, please be aware my joining you does not necessarily increase your odds of success. My presence may help you bring in Zuko and your uncle alive. Or it may accidentally result in circumstances that lead to both of our deaths."

"Just... just pack your bags. I'll be outside."

Ty Lee nodded and returned to bathing herself.

 

***

 

Later, as the three of them were leaving Omashu, Mai told her dour friend, "Thaaaa~aanks for saving my baby brother."

"Don't thank me," Ty Lee replied evenly. "I may have subjected him to a lifetime of pain and sorrow that might otherwise been avoided if he died."

"Or he'll be super-happy!" Mai threw an arm around her friend's shoulder. "So we're tracking down some traitors, huh? It'll be interesting seeing Zuko again, won't it, Ty Lee?"

The existentialist acrobat turned her head away. Maybe she blushed. Maybe she didn't. Time moved forwards regardless.


	2. alt!Beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last installment of this particular AU.

"I realize true individualism is seldom realized," Ty Lee admitted to her friends around the fire. "We have to rely on society around us to survive above a subsistence level, and the co-workers and friends we acquire infringe on our freedom just as family obligations do."

Zuko kicked the sand. "Do you ever listen to yourself talk? She," he pointed to Mai, "said I wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer for wanting to date you. Don't you care?"

"Hey," Mai said, "it's not my fault that the universe is one huge metaphor for kni~ves. I just call it like it is."

"But Mai has a point," Ty Lee said flatly. "If we got married, it would impose a limit on our own freedom to seek out other partners. Moreover, our lives would be bound by the concept of the singular 'couple' created by our relationship."

Azula rubbed her temples. "I can literally _feel_ myself going crazy being around you two."

"What about love?" Zuko demanded.

"Love is only a brief shelter from the terror of individuality."

Zuko said, "So you'd rather be lonely than make an effort to not be?"

"Don't you ever listen to me?" Ty Lee asked, anger edging into her voice. "I'll always be lonely. Nothing will change that."

"But how can you know that if you've never tried!"

Ty Lee stared into the campfire. "I grew up with six older sisters that looked exactly like me. Nothing I did made me any different from them. It was like I didn't have my own name. And you know what, Zuko? The fact I really _did_ have a name DIDN'T! CHANGE! ANYTHING!" She stood up and walked over to her ex-boyfriend, getting right up in his face. "So don't tell me that sleeping with you will change anything! I'd just be 'Royal Consort' or 'Mom' or - or 'WIFEY'!"

Zuko replied, "I would never call you wifey."

"It doesn't matter _what_ you'd call me! It still wouldn't be who I am here!" She tapped her left breast.

He kissed her.

She slapped him, cheeks flushed. "J-jerk! That's no answer!"

"Yeah," Mai piped up. "Don't be such a lip rapist, Zuko."

"Stupid bangs," Azula muttered to herself. She ran her manicured nails through her hair. "Maybe I should just cut you off. That'd show y... oh no. It's starting!"

"I don't have any answers, okay?" Zuko said to Ty Lee. "I - I'm not... I don't even know what I'm supposed to feel anymore! I don't even like myself! I - I don't even know how who I am or what I'm supposed to do! What's right and wrong anymore?"

Ty Lee said, "Those are just arbitrary-"

He cut her off before she got traction on that tanget. "But that doesn't mean I can't like you! I'm not confused about you! And... and what I feel about you doesn't affect my feelings about myself. I'm not any more or less confused when I'm kissing you, Ty Lee. There's more to my life - and your life - than me!"

Ty Lee hesitated. "Like how there's you and me, and you and Azula."

"I'm, uh, not _that way_ with Azula."

Mai interjected, "But it'd be hawt."

"I meant as brother and sister."

"Oh."

Azula had turned her head aside to face the empty shoreline. "Quiet, Mother. It's my hair. I can deal with it as I please, especially the traitorous cowlicks."

Ty Lee lowered her eyes. "Zuko, I can't promise anything. I want to be me, even if that means being lonely."

"Then let's be alone together."

Ty Lee closed her eyes, smiling faintly. "Idiot."

The beachside campfire burned on into the night until time exhausted it.


End file.
